Linguistic out-of-Africa evidence

[Loddfafner]

A new study has shown that language was invented only once and in SW Africa. Languages in that area have far more phonemes than elsewhere, especially considering those click consonants. As each migrated and left an area, they pared down their language to a smaller set of phonemes. There is a clear pattern correlating phoneme numbers with distance from Africa.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/15/science/15language.html

[Loki]

This is compelling. The evidence is stacking up overwhelmingly for Out-of-Africa.

http://www.theapricity.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=8256&stc=1&d=1302846191

[Odoacer]

Very interesting read. I'm sure this will cause a lot of controversy amongst linguists. I wish I knew what the difference between each cline on that map is supposed to be.

[SwordoftheVistula]

Interesting theory, but I'm highly skeptical. Supposedly it is based on modern languages, but the boundaries do not fall along modern language lines, and also languages/people did not just travel outwards in concentric circles but looped back around and moved in all different directions.

[Talvi]

I think its odd to say that language was invented. I highly doubt it was.

So according to this New Guinea is the furthest place from Africa? Since Rotoka has the least phonemes? Shouldnt they have more phonemes since people got there pretty early?

[Grumpy Cat]

Ah someone beat me to this:

Human language arose in southern Africa, a new study in Science magazine claims.

Language then spread across the globe through human migration. The claim compliments fossil findings that point to southern Africa as the birthplace of modern humans.

According to the Washington Post, researcher Quentin Atkinson of the University of Auckland in New Zealand conducted the study by breaking down 504 languages into their smallest components, called phonemes. As the Post explains, the words "rip" and "lip" are separated by one phoneme, "one corresponding to the letter 'r' and the other to the letter 'l.'"

Atkinson then looked at the diversity of phonemes throughout the world and found that the farther a people would have travelled from Africa, the fewer phonemes in their language. This means that, as predicted by the study, languages in South America and the Pacific Islands had the fewest phonemes, while African languages had the most.

As groups left Africa, the number of phonemes in their language decrease. As the process was repeated, the total number of phonemes in all the languages created decreased, according to USA Today. This is the same pattern that applies to human genetics. Reports the Post:


The pattern matches that for human genetic diversity: As a general rule, the farther one gets from Africa -- widely accepted as the ancestral home of our species -- the smaller the differences between individuals within a particular population.

The study is unique because it attempts to look at language in the distant past. According to the New York Times, language is at least 50,000 years old, which corresponds with the diaspora of modern humans from Africa. However, because words evolve so quickly, linguists are skeptical of claims of language traces over 10,000 years old. Atkinson used "sophisticated statistical methods developed for constructing genetic trees based on DNA sequences" in order to draw his conclusions, according to the Times.

While viewed with suspicion by some, these new methods are leading to new insights into human language. Linguist Brian D. Joseph of the University of Ohio told the Times, "I think we ought to take this seriously, although there are some who will dismiss it out of hand."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/15/human-language-africa_n_849809.html


Bolded I thought was the most interesting...

[Comte Arnau]

While I have always believed in the out-of-Africa theory both for genetics and linguistics, it'd be a bit naive to rely on just distance for this. As Talvi points out, it's not the same from a genetic/historical point of view to talk about a Papuan language or about a Polynesian one, even if some of them are at the same distance from Africa. But I agree that somehow it can work at a large scale to relate this gradual disappearance of phonemes with language families as a whole.

[Grumpy Cat]

Well, I found it interesting because, well (and maybe I can't judge because of this), I speak two languages: French and English.

English has more phonemes than French, but France is closer to southern Africa than England.

[Comte Arnau]

Well, I found it interesting because, well (and maybe I can't judge because of this), I speak two languages: French and English.

English has more phonemes than French, but France is closer to southern Africa than England.

Well, that's what I mean, you can't really go to specific languages like this, rather see it in a more global way, specially in a chronological way. French and English are just sisters in time, it doesn't really count. ;)

[Magister Eckhart]

Sounds like a load of garbage to me. Out-of-Africa has been taking some blows recently, so it's not surprising that there are efforts on the parts of leftists to bolster support, but this is a weak way of going about it. Language simply doesn't work they way they claim it works here. You can't just show that radiating out from Africa languages have less phonemes therefore language came from Africa - you have to actually follow linguistic migration patterns. It makes little sense, for example, that the fewest phonemes should exist in a place that was inhabited before Europe. Likewise, how can one generate a radiating pattern when the dominant language of places like North Africa is Arabic? What about the influences of Greek and Latin on most European tongues but its absence in Finno-Ugric langauges? How does one account for ancient language families that were spread throughout the ancient world politically (like Latin) and changes within languages - like Chinese/Manchu/Mongol interactions?

This map is far too clean-cut and far too neatly arranged for it to be anything but a blatantly false theory being put forward to strengthen the weak case for recent African origins.